Since Laws were
made for ev'ry Degree,
To curb Vice in others, as well as me,
I wonder we han't better Company,
Upon Tyburn Tree!
But Gold from Law can take out the Sting;
And if rich Men like us were to swing,
'Twould thin the Land, such Numbers to string
Upon Tyburn Tree!

JAILOR. Some Friends of yours, Captain,
desire to be admitted----I leave you together.

Scene 14.MACHEATH, BEN BUDGE, MATT OF THE MINT.

MACHEATH. For my having broke Prison,
you see, Gentlemen, I am order'd immediate Execution.----The Sheriff's
Officers, I believe, are now at the Door.----That Jemmy Twitcher should
peach me, I own surpris'd me!----'Tis a plain Proof that the World is
all alike, and that even our Gang can no more trust one another than
other People. Therefore, I beg you, Gentlemen, look well to yourselves,
for in all probability you may live some Months longer.

MATT. We are heartily sorry, Captain,
for your Misfortune.----But 'tis what we must all come to.

MACHEATH. Peachum and Lockit, you
know, are infamous Scoundrels. Their Lives are as much in your Power,
as yours are in theirs.----
Remember your dying Friend!----'Tis my last Request.----Bring those Villains to the Gallows before you, and I am satisfied.

MATT. We'll do it.

JAILOR. Miss Polly and Miss Lucy
intreat a Word with you.

MACHEATH. Gentlemen, adieu.

Scene 15.LUCY, MACHEATH, POLLY.

MACHEATH. My dear Lucy----My dear
Polly. Whatsoever hath pass'd between us is now at an end----if you are
fond of marrying again, the best Advice I can give you is to Ship
yourselves to the West-Indies, where you'll have a fair Chance of
getting a Husband a-piece, or by good Luck, two or three, as you like
best.

POLLY. How can I support this Sight!

LUCY. There is nothing moves one so
much as a great Man in Distress.

Air LXVII.----All you that must take a
Leap, & c.LUCY.

Would I might be
hang'd!

POLLY.

And I would so
too!

LUCY.

To be hang'd
with you.

POLLY.

My dear, with
you.

MACHEATH.

O leave me to
Thought! I fear! I doubt!
I tremble! I droop!----See, my Courage is out! [Turns up the empty
Bottle.]

BEGGAR. Most certainly, Sir.----To make
the Piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical Justice----Macheath
is to be hang'd; and for the other Personages of the Drama, the
Audience must have suppos'd they were all hang'd or transported.

PLAYER. Why then Friend, this is a
downright deep Tragedy. The Catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an
Opera must end happily.

BEGGAR. Your Objection, Sir, is very
just, and is easily remov'd. For you must allow, that in this kind of
Drama, 'tis no matter how absurdly things are brought
about----So----you Rabble there----run and cry, A Reprieve! ----let the Prisoner
be brought back to his Wives in Triumph.

PLAYER. All this we must do, to comply
with the Taste of the Town.

BEGGAR. Through the whole Piece you may
observe such a Similitude of Manners in high and low Life, that it is
difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable Vices) the fine
Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the
Road, the fine Gentlemen.----Had the Play remain'd, as I first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. 'Twould have shown that the lower sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish'd for them.

"Swift's first conception of it -- the pastoral method applied to Newgate"

___

"There
is a natural connection between heroic and pastoral before they are
parodied, and this gives extra force to the comic mixture. Both when in
their full form assume or preach what the parody need not laugh at, a
proper or beautiful relation between rich and poor. Hence they belong to
the same play -- they are the two stock halves of the double plot.

"Clearly
it is important for a nation with a strong class system to have an
art-form that not merely evades but breaks through it, that makes the
classes feel part of a larger unity or simply at home with each other.
This may be done in odd ways, as well by mockery as admiration. The
half-conscious purpose behind the magical ideas of heroic and pastoral
was being finely secured by the Beggar's Opera when the mob roared its
applause both against and with the applause of Walpole.

"One
of the traditional ideas at the back of the hero was that he was half
outside morality, because he must be half outside his tribe in order to
mediate between it and God, or it and Nature.... This in a queer way was
still alive in the theatre; the perversion of human feeling might not
be justified in the Restoration tragic hero, because he was so ideal,
and the Restoration comic hero was a rogue because he was an aristocrat.
The process of fixing these forms into conventions, the Tragedy of Admiration and the comedy of the predatory wit, undertaken because the former had come to seem unreal,
for some reason brought out their primitive ideas more sharply. Now on
the one hand, this half-magical view seemed to the Augustans wicked as
well as ridiculous; all men were men; they had just put down the
witch-burnings; to a rational pacifism Marlborough and Alexander were
bullies glorified by toadies. On the other hand, they were Tory poets,
and the heroic tradition, always royalist (the King's divine right made the best magical symbol),
had died on their hands. The only way to use the heroic convention was
to turn it into the mock-hero, the rogue, the man half-justified by
pastoral, and the only romance to be extracted from the Whig government
was to satirise it as the rogue. The two contradictory feelings were
satisfied by the same attitude.

"The
rogue so conceived is not merely an object of satire; he is like the
hero because he is strong enough to be independent of society (in some
sense), and can therefore be the critic of it..."

___

"I
should say then that the essential process behind the Opera was a
resolution of heroic and pastoral into a cult of independence. But the
word is capable of great shift of meaning, chiefly because nobody can be
independent altogether; Gay meant Peachum to be the villain, and there
is a case for thinking him more independent than Macheath; the animus
against him seems more than that due to a traitor; Gay dislikes him as a
successful member of the shopkeeping middle class, whereas Macheath is
either from a high class or a low one..."

William Empson: from The Beggar's Opera: Mock Pastoral as the Cult of Independence in Some Versions of Pastoral, 1935

The
infamous outlaw Jack Sheppard, thought to be the "original" of John
Gay's Captain MacHeath, pointing to the door of his cell, plotting
another daring escape: engraving by George White, based on a
painting by James Thornhill made while the subject awaited
execution in Newgate Prison, 1728; plate from Christopher Hibbert, The Road to Tyburn, 1957; image by Geogre, 4 February 2007

Jack
Sheppard uses a rope of knotted bedclothes to lower his mistress Bess
Lyon during their escape from New Prison in Clerkenwell, 25 May 1724: artist unknown

Jack
Sheppard, notorious outlaw thought to have been the model for John
Gay's MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera, in Newgate Prison before his
fourth escape; the label "A" in the brickwork at rear marks the
hole Sheppard made in the chimney during his escape:
anonymous frontispiece drawing from the Narrative of Jack Sheppard's
Life, published by John Applebee in 1724; image by RetiredUser2, 29
January 2007

Wych
Street, off Drury Lane, near Covent Garden, London; on this street Jack
Sheppard, thought to be the original of John Gay's highwayman MacHeath,
was indentured as a carpenter's apprentice in 1717: anonymous engraving, c. 1870 (Theatreleands Metropolitan Archive)

Jack Sheppard Gets Drunk: engraving by George Cruikshank (1792-1878), c. 1840 to illustrate the serialised novel Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth, published in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839

Jack Sheppard in the Stone Room in Newgate: anonymous engraving from Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and
Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, anon., n.d.

The Last Scene: engravings by George Cruikshank to illustrate the serialised novel Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth, published in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839; the captions read: "Jack Sheppard's Farewell to Mr Wood", "Blueskin
cutting down Jack Sheppard", and "The body of Jack Sheppard carried off
by the mob".

Scene from The Beggar's Opera:
print by John Doyle, b&w, 31 x 45 cm, published by Thos. McLean, 26
Haymarket, London, 15 December (Tabley House Collection Trust, University of Manchester / British Cartoon Archive, University
of Kent)

Scene from The Beggar's Opera: print by John Doyle, b&w, 31 x 45 cm, published by Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket, London, 14 April 1841 (Tabley House Collection Trust. University of Manchester / British Cartoon Archive, University
of Kent)

Scene from The Beggar's Opera:
print by John Doyle, b&w, 31 x 45 cm, published by Thos. McLean, 26
Haymarket, London, 8 April 1841 (Tabley House Collection Trust, University of Manchester / British Cartoon Archive, University
of Kent)

Newgate took its name from one of the gates of the City of London. It
was the jail for the most serious criminals. According to William Pyne,
author of the Microcosm of London(1808), on the
Sunday before the condemned were scheduled to die, the 'Ordinary' (the
clergyman) of Newgate preached a special sermon in the jail's chapel. A
black coffin would be placed on a table in the centre of the chapel
(known as the dock). Those condemned to die sat immediately around the
coffin.

The political activist, Francis Place, described his experience of visiting Newgate Prison in the mid-1790s:

"In
1794 I was several times in Newgate on visits to
persons confined for libel & c. -- one Sunday in particular I was there
when several respectable women were also there -- relatives of those I
went to see. When the time for leaving the prison arrived we came in a
body of nine or ten persons into a large yard which we had to cross --
into this yard a number of felons were admitted and they were in such a
condition that we were obliged to request the jailer to compel them to
tie up their rags so as conceal their bodies which were most indecently
exposed and was I have no doubt intentional to alarm the women and
extort money from the men. When they had made themselves somewhat decent
we came into the yard, and were pressed upon and almost hussled by the
felons whose arms and voices demanding money made a frightful noise and
alarmed the women. I who understood these matters collected all the
halfpence I could and by throwing a few at a time over the heads of the
felons set them scrambling swearing all but fighting whilst the women
and the rest made their way as quickly as possible across the yard."
(British Library, Add. MS. 27,826, Place papers. Vol.XXXVIII: Manners
and Morals, vol.II', fol.186)

The pillory at Charing Cross: hand-coloured aquatint printed by John Bluck after drawing by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin for Ackermann's Microcosm of London, 1809The permanent gallows at Tyburn,
which stood where Marble Arch now stands. Executions at this site necessitated
a three-mile cart ride in public from Newgate prison to the
gallows. Huge crowds collected on the way and followed the accused
to Tyburn. These were used as the gallows for London offenders
from the 16th century until 1759.
Note the size of this structure:
about 4 metres tall, it was capable of hanging nine
people at
a time. The victim was led up to the gallows on a
cart, put
in the noose and the cart driven away, Here Jack
Sheppard, aka "Gentleman Jack", notorious thief and multiple escapee,
and allegedly the "original" of John Gay's Captain Macheath in The Beggar's Opera, was hanged 16 November 1724: author unknown, c. 1680 (UK National Archives)

Swift’s perspicacity and rapier wit has, in my opinion, no parallel today. He cuts to the heart of meanings and intentions that perhaps, only Plato/Socrates could reveal, meaning by meaning as to the whys and uses of the various archetypes found in theater and literature. Swift’s plumbing of art as a social and political safety net adds to the what lies behind bread and circus’s, how the status quo can be preserved, have its toxic blood let, yet entertain and for the discerning, educate and transcend amusement.

So glad you liked this; reading the Opera again lately, I found it quite wonderful, and was left dazzled by its genre-bending qualities, its merciless skewering of hypocrisy, avariciousnes and pomposity at all levels and in all nooks and crannies of the human "spectacle".

There is a great -- and obviously deliberate, this is the art of the thing -- blurring of borders in the Opera, as though that invisible wire fence between the classes had become tangled, so that the frontier between "high" and "low" moral and political values becomes impossibly (and hilariously) confused, and everything that is said seems to imply something else, quite often its opposite. Some of the period satire involves politics (the Whig PM, Walpole, paired with a comparable arch-manipulator, Peachum) and style (the rage in London for Handelian operatics, which the play exposes), but these references appear now to comprise the furniture of the piece, topical bits of joke overlaid upon its underlying structure.

Parallels between the opposed social classes are often presented in ways that would have seemed sharp, even embarrassing to some at the time. This shock effect along with the exuberant fun of the thing combined to make the play so successful that Handel was driven off the London stage for a whole season by Gay's triumph.

All these centuries later however the thrust and point of the play remain unblunted. To show that roguery reigns equally on both sides of the social no man's land, with the most powerful rogues on either side enjoying their successes at the expense of everybody else -- and only those of the "low" side ever getting caught out, due to something (something, we are shown, about human nature) built permanently into this terrible equation -- this achievement of Gay's seems at least as pertinent in 2012 as it would have in 1728.

The Beggar's Opera was the first of the ballad operas to hold the stage beyond the end of the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth it developed into musical comedy. Some at the time thought Gay had got the idea from Addison's curious production Rosamund (1707). But Bonamy Dobrée, who was a close scholar of the period, wrote in 1959 as follows:

"...'Whether this new drama [of Gay's] was the product of judgement or of luck' as Dr Johnson was to comment, 'the praise of it must be given to its inventor'. And it had in it, as recent revivals suggest, the elements of permanence, because although human value are reversed, they exist by implication, and serve as a basis for the apparently careless grace and wit of the whole enchanting and virile performance. How far play-goers can be aware of what Gay is actually doing with them is doubtful: the 'double-irony' method, out of which the jokes are constructed, is inherent in the whole movement of the story', as Professor Empson analyses it in his brilliant study, and the method takes a little time to penetrate; the actors seem to say one thing while actually implying its contrary; delightful shocks are administered to moral sensibility; Macheath can come out with such a Senecan 'sentence' as

A moment of time may make us unhappy for ever;

and the underlying grimness itself stimulates the gaiety, which is sometimes of a weighty order. It is a serious criticism of society delivered as a light-hearted jest."

Sorry to have missed yours till I'd replied to the previous. But yes, Swift is certainly relevant here. It's thought he planted the idea for the Opera in Gay's mind; that would make sense; and in the end there came a brilliant harvest.

These days there is little taste for writers with these rapier skills; indeed, these days, the exercise of such skills would surely prove career-threatening; and skills that are not used can never have been developed; which is unfortunate, for we live in a society that at times seems to beg to be addressed not with kid-gloves fondness but upon the tines of a barbecue fork.

Teachers are beggars in the Operaoften the only ones in townwith jobsfrom the statetheater of middle managementtoo much timetoo much bloodon handswringing outthe results from the newestnewly-launderedexam instead of strangling little necksas would seem propergiven this ongoingparadox.

O teacher, o little lamb teacherpublic school teacherfluffed up for the slaughter

for the sacrificeof the testthat everyone cheats on--

are you now in yourlittle bunkerwaiting for the end?

I see the mini-fridgeyou desired thought of in your widowhoodand the plug-in kettlefor javawho could not do withoutthese modern conveniencesin a modern classroomas you waitfor the final belllike a comfortable mummyall wrapped upin a cozy cardigandespite the heatreading about your husbandMr. Franz Kafka.